Jim Drucker calls himself “The Doo-Wop Priest.” That moniker includes his two most prominent professions, radio disc jockey and Greek rite priest.

Earlier this month, Drucker renewed his disc jockey talents in a new radio show from 5 to 6 p.m. entitled “Rock and Roll Revile” on WWDB 860 AM and WPEN, 97.5 FM-HD2 in Philadelphia.

He recounted his life’s experiences here.

In addition to priest and disc jockey, Drucker has also been a U.S. Air Force chaplain who served in the Persian Gulf, as well as an electrician, radio engineer, musician, songwriter, and music promoter and publisher during his 81 years.

The Early Years

Born in Hazleton in 1942, he was just two months old when his father died. His mother then moved him and his two brothers and sister to south Philadelphia, where he spent his formative years.

Just before his junior year of high school, his mother, a native of Ebervale in Hazle Township, Luzerne County, moved back to the area. He spent his junior and senior years at West Hazleton High School, where he graduated from in 1960.

After high school, he moved back to Philadelphia, where he became a gopher for a talent agency. That led him to produce record hops and albums. Dealing with radio stations gave him the fever for radio.

He still has a music publishing company, Drucker Music Publishing BMI.

In the beginning

Drucker’s disc jockey career began in Carbon County at the former WYNS-AM in Lehighton, and took him to the county’s other radio station, WLSH in Lansford.

After completing a hitch in the U.S. Army, Drucker went to work as an electrician helping to build two submarines in the Quincy, Mass. shipyards. While in Massachusetts, he attended night classes at Emerson College in Boston to study communications.

“Henry Winkler, The Fonz, was a classmate,” Drucker said. “It was then I realized I wanted to be a disc jockey, so I went to the Radio Electronics Institute in Sarasota, Florida for six months to get my First Class FCC (Federal Communications Commission) license.”

A First Class Radiotelephone Operators’ certificate enables the holder to be a radio engineer, enhancing one’s marketability as a radio DJ, Drucker said. He had visited WYNS,

The Nifty 1150 at the time (it later moved to 1160 AM for a power boost), so they knew of his interest.

“Mrs. Phillips (the owner of WYNS) called me, and said I was hired,” Drucker said. “I drove 1,100 miles straight through to take the job.”

History

While at WYNS, Drucker was the music director, and worked with Bud Williams, whose real name was Bill Desing.

Later, he worked at WLS-AM in Chicago with Dick A. Foreman, who became national program director and vice-president of ABC Radio, and Joe “Hiya Hiya Hiya” Reynolds, who then went on to work for WIBG in Philadelphia, Canadian powerhouse CKLW, and KQV in Los Angeles.

While at WYNS, Drucker got a bit part in the motion picture “The Molly Maguires,” which was filmed in the historic village of Eckley.

“I was a stand-in, ironically, for the priest, actor Phillip Bourneuf,” Drucker said. Appearing in the movie conflicted with his WYNS schedule, which led to him leaving the radio station.

After leaving WYNS, he worked at WSCR in Scranton, where the station manager scheduled him around his movie shooting schedule. Then he moved to WAMZ in New Haven, Connecticut.

“I went to visit my shipyard buddies, and got drunk,” he said. “I called in and said I couldn’t make it in the next day, so they fired me.”

Then Ron Allen, the program director of WARM, called. Allen told him George Gilbert, the station manager, wanted to hire Drucker, so he did overnights at then-America’s number one rated station at the time, WARM The Mighty 590 in Scranton.

He left WARM in 1971 to become program director at WBAX in Wilkes-Barre, which Drucker described as “the number two rocker (to WARM) in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre radio market. It was during that time Drucker got his calling to be a priest.

“I got a call from Bud Angst, who was running WLSH, as well as WPAM in Pottsville,” Drucker said. “He was a stern taskmaster and a good man, so I went to work for him for six months while I was searching religious orders.”

The priesthood

Drucker was ordained in 1978 as a priest in the Greek rite, and served parishes in Beaver Meadows, St. Clair, Brockton and Scranton, three in New Jersey and South Hadley, Massachusetts. That’s when he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force Reserves as a chaplain at Westover Air Force Base in Chicopee, Massachusetts.

“My mom died in 1987, and I went on active duty with the Air Force,” he said. “As a parish priest, I got special permission to become Army Senior Chaplain at the rank of captain. I served in the first Gulf War, and was wounded in the leg.”

While in the military, he earned the U.S. Air Force Commendation Medal with Bronze Oak Leaf Cluster; the National Defense Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars for Persian Gulf War/Operation Desert Storm; the Humanitarian Service Medal with two Bronze Service Stars for Operation Provide Comfort, and the Pennsylvania Air National Guard Commendation Medal and Ribbon.

While at Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas, he earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Little Rock.

The Doo-Wop Priest

Rev. Drucker is an active member of the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia, where he met T. Morgan.

“He worked at WICK (a Scranton radio station) in the early and mid-1960s,” Drucker said. “He went to college in Philadelphia, and went to WMMR and asked ‘Why don’t you play album cuts?’ He is the person who brought classic rock to Philadelphia.”

Morgan started outsidefm.com, which is an Internet radio station, where Rev. Drucker also does a radio show.